Note: I’m not a military analyst and am not claiming to be. I’m a common citizen of India wondering why what is evident to the observant was missed this badly by a country’s government.
The first I heard of Operation Sindoor was after we had already hit ‘terrorist targets’ in Pakistan, and the right wing was wishing Pakistan a happy ‘Diwali,’ proudly explaining how the operation’s name symbolized the sindoor of the women who’d lost their husbands in the terrorist attack at Pehelgam.
While I hadn’t been too active on social media, this took me by surprise. I hadn’t heard of any progress in the investigation into the attack. Comments by others on Twitter confirmed the same. Still, our government—notorious for its lack of communication even during calmer times and completely opaque with these high-profile maneuvers—left me expecting some BJP supporter ‘in the know’ to educate us ‘ignorants’ at some point. That didn’t happen either. Instead, there was massive jubilation over the strikes that must have taken their sleeping victims by surprise.
Aghast at what the uninitiated me could only see as a strike on unarmed civilians, I questioned the action somewhat half-heartedly. Obviously, if they’d really found the terrorists, I definitely wanted them killed because there was no point expecting Pakistan to do anything about them other than offer tacit encouragement. Unsurprisingly, updates from Pakistan expressing grief and rage started flooding the media. It became clear that at least several of the victims were likely innocent—two were children.
To my complete horror, this revelation made no difference to the celebrations over ‘killing terrorists.’ Why it surprised me, though, is unclear in hindsight—countless such celebrations of Muslim deaths are unfortunately routine here, with victims met with hostility instead of sympathy. And these were Pakistani!
India apparently hadn’t expected much in the way of retaliation, as initial claims of our fighters being downed by PAF retaliation were quickly dismissed as propaganda. There was no clear news, and before reports could consolidate, India swiftly blocked a large number of sources that might shed light on the situation. News reporting grew extremely tight-lipped. Still, I remember feeling uneasy, given that we’d had a pilot captured under similar circumstances after Balakot. Stories rarely remain hidden from the curious on the internet, though, and soon I found better sources than the Indian media—foreign military analysts. Combined with the news of Rafale stocks falling while Chengdu stocks rose… the writing was on the wall.
From that moment, I knew that India’s new brand of nationalist optics—inciting outrage to bolster political support—had escalated onto the global stage. The events are common knowledge now, but some deeply disturbing thoughts remain, and they’re worth discussing.
The Ethics of the Initial Strikes
We had no information on the identities of the Pehelgam attack terrorists, so this strike was, at best, aimed at suspected backers. As much as I’d like to see terrorists dead, I’d want to be certain those being killed were, in fact, terrorists. While we didn’t get much explanation from our own government, Pakistani media was blocked, and Indian media didn’t have access to the sites, The New York Times investigated the targets hit.
But such is the nature of nationalistic jingoism infatuated with its own invincibility. It didn’t occur to anyone that killing civilians and targeting religious buildings in another country might be legally and morally indefensible. Even if it had to be done, it could have been a discrete attack or communicated with better messaging. The propaganda factory churned out the names of various terrorists allegedly killed, and supporters readily believed the narrative, never questioning how India could magically know the exact location of over two dozen individuals and target them during a single air-to-ground bombing run and conveniently find them all among terrorists. At one point, anybody killed was automatically a terrorist, including a Kashmiri teacher who died in Pakistani shelling.
Lack of Foresight in Provocation
This action was straight out of the Israel playbook: hitting civilians and then accusing them of harboring terrorists or accusing terrorists of using them as shields. This approach has long been condemned by those with any sense of morality. Attempting it during a time when Israel itself is facing unprecedented criticism for such methods was staggeringly tone-deaf, even from a purely strategic standpoint. Doing it against a nuclear-armed country and openly taunting them with provocations to retaliate was nothing short of suicidal stupidity.
At this point, I believe Indian warmongers imagined that the more Pakistan attacked, the more India could clobber them in the name of defense. Any kind of decency, concern for human life or even simple logic vanished in a frenzy of bloodlust.
The Modi government runs on optics. It didn’t come to power to deliver governance, and it is never held accountable for failing to deliver it. Its supporters will apparently support anything, as long as Hindus are portrayed as India’s rightful citizens and non-supporters may be humiliated with impunity.
The optics of the Indian Air Force delivering bombs to decisively destroy a terrorist threat are certainly compelling. But nobody seemed to have asked: What if the strike didn’t succeed as planned? Perhaps the government assumed its media machine could proclaim victory and silence dissent. But state-serving media has no sway on the global stage, and India ended up as a laughingstock when Pakistan played clips of our hysterical news coverage—declaring Pakistan’s Naval Base at Karachi was destroyed and Islamabad various cities were decimated in various ways—during their global briefing.
At a time when we needed to convince the world of our actions and goals, we failed miserably to even come across as humane with our warmongering media unleashing bloodlust on television screens and credible news sources and journalists blocked by the thousands to create an echo chamber of fake news in India. Such actions do not inspire trust at a time when we needed it the most. Anybody to comment adversely on the war received barrages of abusive comments, not just from anonymous trolls, but also from official accounts of people who should have been far more responsible in national interest.
In an exceptionally embarrassing side note, a TV anchor, Gaurav Arya, expanded his vitriol beyond India and Pakistan by publicly insulting the Iranian foreign minister and calling him a ‘son of a pig’ on live TV, circling his image with a red marker and writing pig in case anybody missed his clever taunt. Channels showed Islamic flags trampled by Indian protesters. All at a time when India needed the international community to see it as morally upright and support it and aggressive with Pakistan over terrorism, and not just for being Muslim.
If the goals seeming to drive the government’s supporters were real, and we wanted to decimate Pakistan or split it into four countries, etc – we certainly hadn’t bothered to collect the support from other countries we’d need to pull it off. If we’d wanted a swift, decisive victory before anybody could intervene, we hadn’t planned for that either and kept taunting, waiting for Pakistan to retaliate. If we didn’t want an escalation, as we claimed, we hadn’t planned for that for sure. And our whole war mania fizzled out with the announcement of the ceasefire by Trump. I don’t think India’s sovereignty has been this badly spanked – ever, where the Prime Minister can launch an operation named to avenge the husband’s killed in an attack and it gets shut down abruptly by the President of aother country – because that’s what the ceasefire amounted to. Within hours, China had underlined “game over” by declaring support for Pakistan in defending itself. And now we’re in a position of having to take much greater risks to assert our dignity or absorb the humiliation. A humiliation Indians had neither asked for, nor knew about until it was too late. What exactly was the planning behind this?
There had been no attempt to set clear expectations and the attacks on the Pakistan airbases simply seemed to imply that India was on its way to conquering Pakistan, which makes no sense. Ground troops of both countries hadn’t moved. But the hysteria made any talk of sense impossible. Expectations were sky-high and jingoism was the only move dwarfing the considerable efforts and successes of the Indian Air Force.
We failed to prevent an IMF loan to Pakistan in a world where Pakistan sponsoring terror doesn’t even have to be explained. Our ceasefire was brokered by the US and announced abruptly by Trump himself in a gigantic departure from India’s insistence that we would not accept third-parties mediating between India and Pakistan. Announced by the President of another country, in a statement calling both countries great nations and completely ignoring India’s stand that Pakistan is a terror sponsoring state. Our Prime Minister hasn’t been seen since, but the ceasefire Trump announced has been diligently withheld, including by covering up several Pakistani attacks since then. What does this mean?
Attacks have not proved successful deterrence against terrorism, but even if we had to opt for them, we should have seen them through instead of agreeing to a ceasefire when we had a clear advantage, only for Pakistan to declare victory and continue ceasefire violations. If we had to escalate, we should have pressed the advantage to some solid concessions before stopping. The political leadership, probably for fear of optics simply caved once the holes in the propaganda started showing. This is not a good position for India.
Vague Goals to begin with
What did this achieve? Nothing. No terrorists were captured or neutralized (no, killing families only counts in gang wars, and the world doesn’t run on kanpatti pe gun), the world saw through our claims, and India was left diplomatically isolated.
But beyond that, what were our goals? Say we don’t need the world to approve and have a big enough army to handle Pakistan ourselves. What happens next in our imagination? With both countries being nuclear powers, and Pakistan warning about it straight off the bat, we wouldn’t be able to defeat Pakistan in any case. If forced into a corner, it would threaten nuclear strikes. But well before that, the world would intervene. Even if the world didn’t intervene, China, with its massive investment in the CPEC and need for the Gwadar port, wouldn’t allow us to defeat Pakistan. And anybody who thinks India can defeat China in a war, let alone China and Pakistan at the same time is completely delusional and not worth discussing.
Get this straight. If we had won – it wouldn’t have mattered – we have the bigger army. we’d have temporarily set Pakistan back, but it wouldn’t last. There was no way to increase prestige here, just massive spending to strike a dramatic pose for a few days at best. No matter how much we won, we’d be fighting a smaller force with surprise on our side. Terror attacks would remain cheaper than outright wars. But losing planes in that skirmish with the smaller force with the world analyzing the clash to study the planes and missiles used, did massive damage. This is the most puzzling thing. We seem to have barged into a no-win situation with no foresight whatsoever. Nobody seems to have given thought to the fact that in all the decades we enjoyed peace, Pakistan’s jets have been flying in the Afghan War alongside some of the world’s best pilots and Balochistani separatists regularly. They are supplied mainly by China with an active investment in protecting their sovereignty, while our arms suppliers are busy with both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war. Why did we even assume that this could only go our way?
So now what? We couldn’t possibly pressure Pakistan into cooperation, because the nature of our strikes forced Pakistan to retaliate in assertion of their sovereignty, the opposite of cooperation. The government would be completely discredited if it didn’t. And indeed, the supporters of the government cheering for war said as much, that India wanted Pakistan to escalate, going so far as to troll anybody who wanted a de-escalation, even when that was India’s claimed stand. So how was this supposed to end if Pakistan couldn’t reasonably be defeated, and de-escalation wasn’t an option? Two options remain – stalemate or defeat. And for that we risked the lives of our forces, of vulnerable citizens along the border. For no achievable worthwhile goal.
The idiots driving the country into a ditch hadn’t stopped for a moment to think beyond the initial dazzling optics. Where did they plan to land this soaring flight of fancy? No clue.
But there will be consequences
Since the words of a US President are such a big deal today, let me borrow from another. Abraham Lincoln had said, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” While we seem incapable of stopping speaking, at least on the armed forces front, our measured policies served to avoid conflict. At the same time, India’s superiority in numbers was a massive deterrent, even as the needs for modernization, recruitment, funding and so on were present. True, we have a much bigger border than Pakistan, but in a war, we had greater numbers. bigger army, more planes. It was a deterrent against Pakistani adventurism, because Pakistan cannot realistically win against us. But we completely unnecessarily proved that despite our size, we cannot win against them either, because we will be stopped before the larger numbers or enduring power can be an advantage. Pakistan not only has the nukes and godfathers rushing in to protect it, it has a long history of attacking India to capture Kashmir. A goal their fanatics will now believe to be within reach. Operation Sindoor increased the risk of Pakistani attacks – both terror and conventional “limited” wars – by reducing our deterrent power and heaping on humiliating provocation. Just last week, if you’d asked anybody who’d win in a massive dogfight between India and Pakistan with India outnumbering Pakistan, many, Pakistanis included, might have expected it to be India. Well, that’s history now. Regardless of what would happen in truth the next time, the deterrent of a very likely defeat is gone.
Operation Sindoor weakened Pakistan’s already dodgy democracy further, giving more power to their armed forces – who are our real enemies – by making them heroes in the eyes of their people and confirming their propaganda that India is the bogeyman who will attack them any day if not for the Army.
This will also embolden terrorists and strengthen their value to the army, who now have some proof that Pakistan will defend them and India will have to pay heavy costs for retaliation. Because we just proved that it works!!! Organizations like Al Qaeda and ISIS are known to be interested in igniting war. We just showed them too that all they have to do is a terror attack and whether Pakistan did it or not, wants it or not, we will drag both countries into war.
We undermined India’s adamant stand that Kashmir was a bilateral issue. We actually let another country’s president declare a ceasefire on our behalf! All these are precedents. It isn’t a coincidence that Indira Gandhi was trending today.
The need for a sensible plan for Pakistan
As China pointed out recently, India, Pakistan and China are neighbours. And nuclear armed neighbours at that. None of the countries can move away, and they can’t be wiped out without risking wiping out a giant chunk of humanity. It is in our interest to understand this and rather than feed the masses with warmongering and bloodlust, form a vision the country can support productively. Yes, all the arguments are known. Pakistan uses terrorists. We know. But the sooner we accept that we can’t just provoke escalations without knowing we have things under control, the better. India has massive soft power. There was a time when we could use it. We had managed to get Pakistan recognized as a terror sponsoring state and bring pressure through allies and economic strategies.
Our institutions have been hollowed out in the service of one individual and his political party rather than national interest. We’ve treated investigating agencies like an extension of the ruling party’s private detectives and armed forces as a tool for political posturing. This may work for the political profit of one party, but it is created on the backs of a nation and weakens both the nation and the institutions.
Even more importantly, the global isolation on Operation Sindoor should be a lesson that our own actions must be above reproach and we must have enough clarity that we can defend them well on a global stage. Bullying dissent into compliance can only go so far.
Winning or losing is about strength, not righteousness. To defeat terror and have the support of the world, we need to be in the right and operate from careful justice and not flamboyant revenge.
Please, consider the well-being of the country when risking its safety, and not just the political points that can be scored through posturing in the event our forces give up their lives to create a win for the government’s whims.